1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for protecting the transmission of contents. More particularly, the present invention relates to an apparatus and method for protecting the transmission of contents, which can safely transmit contents.
2. Description of the Related Art
Near Field Communication (NFC) refers to a contactless-type short range wireless communication technology led by such companies as Nokia, Sony, Royal Philips Electronics, and IBM, and employs a frequency band of 13.56 Mhz and transmits data at the maximum data rate of 424 Kbps within a distance of 10 m utilizing low power consumption. As described above, a characteristic of short-range communication includes a security function. If the NFC, which is a source technology enabling various applications under a next generation ubiquitous environment, is employed, phone numbers, images, tickets, MP3 files, among other items, can be transmitted/received between devices such as mobile phones, AV equipment, digital cameras, PDAs, and set-top boxes in the near future without user operation. Recently, mobile phone manufacturing corporations such as Nokia Corporation, Motorola, Samsung, and LG, have set to develop NFC mobile phones in earnest.
In addition, Bluetooth is one of a number of standards for small-sized and low-priced wireless interfaces having low power consumption for wireless connection between portable devices, such as mobile phones and portable PCs, network access points, and other peripheral devices. Bluetooth is a communication technology enabling connection between devices separated from each other by a distance of 10 m under normal conditions (the maximum distance of 100 m) even though there are obstacles. For symmetric communication mode, Bluetooth has a data rate of 433.9 Kbps, and a data rate of 723.3 Kbps for asymmetric communication mode. When voice is transmitted, a 64 Kbps synchronous transmission mode and a maximum of three voice channels may be employed. In addition, technology supporting a data rate of 10 Mbps, which enables the transmission of a moving picture, has been developed.
The security in Bluetooth is provided only for a wireless link. The Bluetooth standard defines three security services such as confidentiality, authentication, and authorization. Confidentiality is defined for preventing the tapping of information; authentication is defined for identifying a communication device; and authorization is defined for controlling resources. These Bluetooth security services encrypt information exchanged between Bluetooth devices through a procedure of creating an initialization key using a personal identification number (PIN) of the Bluetooth devices, performing authentication, creating and exchanging link keys, and creating an encryption key.
Bluetooth has no suitable scheme of sharing PINs, however, so users must personally input their PIN into each device. In addition, the initialization key is dependent on a user's PIN, and the procedure of creating the initialization key is weak. Furthermore, Bluetooth has a structure that is inherently weak in security due to the weakness of the link key, encryption key, device authentication, and a stream cipher algorithm. Accordingly, Bluetooth is unsuitable for protecting communication content, since content may be obtained by an illegal user while it is being downloaded. This problem occurs in Wi-Fi as well as Bluetooth.
In a relationship between the Bluetooth and NFC standards, the NFC forum's sponsor members define Bluetooth as a virtual cable and NFC as a virtual connect. The NFC device mainly sets up, initializes, and authenticates a wireless protocol such as Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, and actual data transmission can be achieved based on these standards. In other words, the user authentication procedure employed in receiving transmission content, such as a moving picture, an MP3, and games, is employed by using the NFC device but the content is actually transmitted based on high-speed Bluetooth.
For example, there may be a content vending machine for moving pictures, MP3s, among others. A user having a mobile phone employing NFC and Bluetooth chips performs user authentication together with the content vending machine using NFC technology in order to download content from the content vending machine, including various items such as moving pictures and MP3s. The user may then download corresponding content from the content vending machine by encrypting the corresponding items using Bluetooth technology. However, problems related to security still remain if the security mechanism of Bluetooth is solely employed.
Accordingly, if the security mechanism of Bluetooth is complemented by providing an encryption key distribution service as well as an authentication service using the transmission characteristics of NFC technology, Bluetooth security problems may be solved.